


Liquid Affair

by gloss



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Banter, Cloud City, Espionage, Identity Porn, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25957510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Some time before the Death Star is blown up, but after Solo wins back theMillennium Falcon, Cassian visits Cloud City, newly under Lando's administration, on what should be a straightforward spy mission.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Lando Calrissian
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	Liquid Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



> for Nununununu in the [Equality Matters](https://equalityauction.dreamwidth.org/) fundraiser for Black Lives Matter. Thank you so much for your donation and I hope this pleases.
> 
> Enormous thanks to galacticproportions for early audiencing and to bell and Aphrodite_Mine for incredibly thoughtful, helpful beta work.

Cassian's tiny berth was in a lower-class ring of Cloud City. It was booked for three cycles. He hoped to be finished and on his way out of here within one. 

"It would be quite nice if you did finish early," Draven had said during the mission briefing. "Budgets being what they are."

Cassian had nodded. He didn't see any particular snags to the plan: Get in, gamble a little to establish cover, make contact with a sector manager for the shipbuilding division of Diversified Core Holdings, receive the data, gamble some more, get out.

"Efficiency is my goal," he said when he realized he needed to say something. "Always."

Draven frowned slightly. "Use caution, Andor. Not shortcuts."

That was the kind of advice that sounded eminently reasonable in the moment. 

Now, however, as he washed up and reviewed his cover identity before going to the casino, Cassian saw all too clearly the limitations of that counsel. He could not know beforehand which decision might be cautious, which hasty.

Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that he was here ostensibly to gamble. If not appropriate, then ironic, since he had never been comfortable with chance. It was, however, all he had ever known.

*

Lando was _born_ for this. He should have taken over a resort-and-mining facility years ago. This was one of the best parts of his new position: strolling through the public areas, including gaming floors and dining lounges, glad-handing the visitors and making contacts. You never knew when it might come in handy to have just the right name to call, or to know a face where it shouldn't be.

A second round of walking the casino floor yielded much tastier bounty than his first. The second shuttle had arrived an hour ago and discharged tourists just the way he liked them: fresh faces and full credit accounts.

Lando pulled up next to the slight young man at the back bar and invited him to the Baron's table for a few runs of Star and Droid.

His name, or so he maintained, was Timon Yabé, and Lando was fascinated. Young and eager, with big eyes in a face that had known hunger, he rarely laughed but bought drinks generously. He listened with the sort of focus Lando respected.

"Have a seat." Lando grinned, wide and easy, when they reached his personal table. "I insist."

"I'm not much of a dice player," Timon said.

Oh, this was just far too delightful. "All the better!" Lando patted the perch beside him. "Let me show you the basics."

Timon's mouth tilted up at one corner as he took the seat. "This isn't necessary."

"My dear," Lando said, "do you have any idea how rare it is to find someone like you?"

As Timon's eyes met Lando's, his gaze sharpened. "And what am I like?"

Lando threw open his arms, at once gesturing for more drinks, re-shaking the three dice, and half-embracing Timon. "Delightful," was all he said in response. "Just delightful."

He spoke the truth. 

Delightful as he was, Timon did, however, give off some quality that was not entirely trustworthy. That was, of course, nothing that Lando would ever automatically fault someone for.

His posture was a little too straight, as if he were constantly reminding himself to stay rigid. His eyes moved as quickly as a con man's, but never settled. 

*

_You get in, you do your job, and you get out_ , Draven always said. 

Now that Cassian was here, he could have used a bit more in the way of practical advice.

*

When Lando checked the security report, no flags came up. Timon Yabé, human, unaffiliated with any Imperial branch or private corporation. A nonentity, as anonymous and unremarkable as anyone else here. Whatever his suspicions might have been, Lando set them aside for the time being. He was being over-cautious — not quite paranoid, but too careful, a state every bit as dangerous as utter recklessness. Hold yourself too tense, and the fall will kill you.

"Sir?" the security droid inquired.

"That will be all," Lando replied, adding after a moment, "thank you."

When he first took this office, his polite treatment of the droids caused no end of gossip.

He skimmed through footage from the floor. Abstracted like this, patterns emerged that he could not have seen in person.

For example, before Lando met him, Timon had moved deliberately around the gaming floor in order, it seemed, to keep Reem Shama always within his sightline.

*

"Excuse me?" Cassian pushed into the lift. "I think you dropped something. Did you drop something?"

Shama's lethorn tentacles twitched. "I don't think so."

"Are you sure?"

"Premiere deck next. No back-deck visitors," the lift announced. "Premier deck."

Shama continued to stare straight ahead. "You're mistaken."

The lift slowed.

"No," Cassian said. "I'm not."

"Yes," Shama replied. His double-lids came up over his bulbous eyes. "Things change."

"Even promises?" Cassian twisted the ring on his right hand.

Shama shrugged. His message was clear: Shama was reneging on the transfer of data.

"Leave me alone," Shama said. His lethorns curled up at the ends and his forked tongue peeked out, tasting the air. "I'm well within my rights to alert the authorities."

He wasn't just reneging. He intended to go to the Imperials.

As the lift came to a gentle stop, Cassian faked a stumble and grabbed Shama's arm for balance. The pneuma-barb on his ring delivered its poison into Shama's hide.

"That's enough!" Shama hissed.

Cassian righted himself, twisting away from the doors as they started to open. He made himself smile. "My mistake, sir, apologies."

Shama strode out of the lift. Depending on his weight and how much he'd had to drink, he would be dead in two or three hours.

Cassian rode the lift back to the gaming floor. Chill sweat had broken out over his body. His stomach, though empty, felt solid, heavy. He needed a drink every bit as much as an alibi.

At least his hands weren't shaking. He'd mastered that particular post-assassination symptom a few months ago.

*

The dining lounge just off the casino had emptied out when the floor show started up. Lando brought a carafe of Socorran brandy with him as he approached the slight, hunched figure standing at the bar.

Lightly, but quietly, Lando asked, "What do you want with Reem Shama?" 

Timon did not react. He very carefully and obviously did not react. He hadn't even startled at Lando's sudden appearance. Staring straight ahead, he took a sip of his drink, then said, "Who's Reem Shama?"

Smiling, Lando rolled over so he was leaning against the bar, one elbow up, legs crossed. He took in the gaming floor, waved to a few regulars, then said, as if this were the most casual conversation in the world, "Chagrian. Huge losses on razor-sabacc. Handsome fellow, should horns and tentacles be your type."

Now Timon did swallow, a few times. He set down his glass. "I don't have a type."

"Of course you do," Lando replied. He touched Timon's arm, squeezed his elbow, slid his palm up his bicep. "Everyone has types."

"Plural?"

Lando shrugged. "I'm a broad-minded man."

"Of course you are." Timon shifted out from under Lando's touch.

"But I have to say I am..." Lando paused, then let the silence gather volume.

Finally: "Yes?"

He waved his hand slowly. "Disappointed, I suppose."

As Timon looked down, a smile deepened the corners of his mouth. "Why's that?"

This close, Lando saw that Timon's jacket did not fit him. It had been hastily — and rather poorly — tailored, cut down from a piece several sizes larger. His boots, too, were not his own. He was much smaller than this costume wanted to let on.

He was sharp enough, however, that Lando knew that, even naked, he would keep his secrets close.

That just made all of this a better challenge.

"Because," Lando said as he turned back around and risked a palm trailing down Timon's back, coming to rest cupping one buttock, "I was hoping your tastes ran a bit more..."

"Ah," Timon said, and, "yes." He shook a lock of hair from his eyes, yet didn't look over. His ass shifted under Lando's touch. "Do you have somewhere private?"

*

Cassian arrived in Draven's service knowing quite well how to use his mouth and hands. What he learned under Draven were refinement, technique, and playacting.

He'd assumed they would find a storage closet, he'd fall to his knees and suck Calrissian's brains out through his dick. It would not have been an onerous task. He was looking forward to it, even as Calrissian guided him to a private lift and then off on to a secure floor, their journey interrupted only by furious kisses.

Here in Calrissian's office suite, Cassian did not have to play at pleasure. Calrissian worked him open, bidding him to relax, to ride his long, elegant fingers soaked in slick, then pushed into him so smoothly that Cassian's exhaled breath seemed to come from the head of Calrissian's cock.

"Now," Calrissian said, one hand gripping Cassian's hip, the other groping to jerk him off, "isn't that better?"

_Better than what?_ , Cassian did not ask. He pushed back and moaned, determined to drown all suspicion, paranoia, guilt in pleasure.

Calrissian mouthed the nape of his neck and drew him out, quivering and taut, to the very edge. When Cassian lifted his head, he saw their figures reflected dully in the polished metal wall opposite: a tangle of limbs and hues, inextricable.

Shama should be dead by now.

They dozed afterward on the long, low couch that was more bed than anything else.

_In and out_ , Draven said as Cassian's head cleared. _Efficient_.

"Not so quick," Lando said.

"I need to go," Cassian insisted.

Lando gave him a long, slow, lingering smile. "Do you really?"

"I can't stay."

"Are you _sure_ about that?" He patted the couch, his long fingers ruching up the upholstery, then smoothing it back out. He plucked at the fabric, rubbed it between two fingertips, then let it drop. Each movement reverberated across Cassian's skin, a reminder of previous touches as well as a promise of further ones.

He kept his eyes on Cassian and there was no way he didn't know what effect he was having.

Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose as he hung his head. "This isn't the place for me."

"No one's asking you to move in, love." Lando walked his fingertips up the center of Cassian's spine. When he reached the nape of Cassian's neck, he squeezed lightly and dug his thumb into the nearest knot. "Unless, of course, that's something you'd like..."

The laugh Cassian gave sounded, even to his own ears, more like a sob. It stuck in his throat and would not come free. Lando pounded on his back.

Coughing, Cassian stood and started looking for his trousers. Lando reclined on the couch, utterly naked, one arm crossed behind his head. He was difficult — impossible — to look at directly. Cassian had seen plenty of corpses as well as body parts in his day, many of them broken or dead at his own hands. He was not squeamish about physical degradation.

Nor was he able, it seemed, to appreciate physical beauty.

When he sat back on the edge of the bed to lace up his boots, Lando's touch immediately returned. His palm was warm, pressed against the small of Cassian's back. He stroked the light hair there, made Cassian shiver a bit.

"Thanks," Cassian said. "For everything."

"My dear," Lando said, hugging him with one arm, kissing the exposed side of his neck. "The pleasure was all mine."

Something burned behind his face and Cassian had to squeeze his eyes shut. 

If he hurried, he could make the last shuttle out.

Before he could stand, Lando tightened his hold. His mouth slid, warm and wet, to the hinge of Cassian's jaw, just before his ear.

"You try to kill anyone else in my city, we'll need to have words. Tell your people, whoever they are. We're off-limits."

Cassian nodded rapidly. "All right."

"Good." Lando kissed him again. "You ever need some time off, a break? Or a new job? You know where to come."

He kept on nodding.


End file.
